Sunday, 29 May 2016

Just a quick update today. I've been able to paint a couple of civilians these days, but I'm constantly on a rush and haven't been able to post them!

Not much to say about them. I got both minis at the same time than the Infinity lady. The first one is also a lady from Infinity:

Colours look awful in this pic! It looks much better in hand

Don't know what this mini is in gaming terms, nor what that Cosmic Cube is either

Anyway, she makes another nice civilian lady. Cool for me

The other one comes from the Sedition Wars ranges. Once again, it was love at first sight. He just looked like an adventurer, maybe a pilot ready to pack his stuff and take his ship to other planet, maybe a bank robber with his profits after the big heist...

Endless possibilities

I'm noticing the chipping on the base as I'm posting the pics. D'oh

I simply knew I needed the mini

Now a couple of size comparison pics. First, the parasol lady:

She's quite a woman!

Then these two of today:

Not so tall, they are slightly taller than these GW, but they all blend in nicely

This is it, this unexpected civilian interlude has been fun, maybe precisely because I had no plans at all for these, I simply found them and needed to paint them :D
Let's see what comes next!

Sunday, 22 May 2016

I've finally got the chance to play the game! (Remember, rules and everything needed for gaming are available for download here). There are some scenarios and stuff, but as my rival and I just wanted to try the rules, we went for the most basic approach, i.e., a gunshot between two bands until one of them is entirely wiped out :D

Troop type (from left to right): Piston (hardened veteran), another Piston, Gear (regular trooper), Dynamo (special weapons and stuff), another Gear and a Probe (junior member of the band).

The game is skirmish oriented, so each member of the band is highly customizable. The weapons and armour choices truly help to build up the post-apoc ambientation. They are going to be equipped with leather clothes (which is better than nothing!), bows or just knives. If you can afford it, you may get a rifle, but that's top technology! One of the fun things of the game is that ammo must be purchased, it's not included with the weapon. So you may want to bluff, letting your opponent believe that your gun is fully operational when in fact it's nothing but a fancy club.

The game works with an alternate activation system, starting with the minis with higher agility profile and down from there. It makes sense at this scale and works pretty nice; much better than a IGOUGO system. Each character has a number of actions, which can be used in any imaginable way; move, shoot, aim or interact with any piece of scenery or player; that provides a close-to-RPG experience, which in my opinion is highly appreciated. You can lock doors, plunder corpses, activate dormant computers... whatever. Really reminds me of Rogue Trader (and that is some serious thing to say!). Besides, the defensive fire action (the beloved Overwatch rule from WH40K2!!) adds a depth level into the mechanics of the game.

Enough chitchat, the game will explain better with some pics! I will be running the Gangers and my pal the Junkers.

Gangers come out from the nuclear haunted forest and Junkers advance from the once cargo bay

Both bands move forward and the bow guy gets to a high position

After some movement looking either for cover or a firing position, the action starts. The diver guy shoots his harpoon gun, trying to hit the Gangers Chief:

What's the onomatopoeia for a damn harpoon gun?

Shooting depends on many factors, such as weapon range (short/medium/long) or, of course, the character's skills. You can spend one action in aiming (so you have enhanced precision when shooting) and stuff like that. The hit is just a matter of rolling dice an adding the weapon penetration factor against the target armour value.
In this case the shoot missed anyway, so nothing happened.

Soviet Girl gets on the crate and decides to jump onto the closest one

Ouch! Epic fail

Leaping is another type of action, but falling from objects can really hurt! In this case as the height wasn't a big deal, nothing happened.

End of Turn 1

The Gangers Chief shoots her rifle trying to get the diver down.

Success! Blamm. Man down!

She moves forward, but MiniMario intercepts her!

Close combat is quite easy, almost just in the same fashion than shooting. Roll 1D10, add your Combat skill. Assaulting will give you bonuses. Some weapons also add bonuses. The higher result wins the combat, then proceed to hit.
Roll 1D10, add your Strenght and any bonuses. The other mini rolls 1D10, adds its Toughness and any other amour bonuses. If the attacker gets a higher result, then it's a wound. That's it.

One of the nicest things about the game is how even the lowest tech weapon can be deadly. Being myself used to uberwarriors in power armour, lasguns, grenades and missile launchers, I find it utterly interesting and refreshing. Post-apoc FTW!
In this case, little MiniMario got a lucky die roll which overrun his (allegedly superior) rival just by the assault bonus. The Ganger Chief wearing barely nothing but hardened leather got into serious problems even against the tiny small blade the boy was wielding. So that was it, the ridiculous knife proved lethal!

This happens when you go to a brawl in your bikini

Battle went on! The Arrow guy took position on the water deposit and shooted to the Bowler Hat guy:

Once again, it's just a guy with a bow, what can he possibly...

Is that for real? You just killed a guy with an arrow?

Take my word, every single weapon in the game is something you should fear, no matter what.

So boy, you just killed my boss, did ya?

Smash! (The poor guy had no chances this time)

End of Turn 2

The Ganger Badass climbed up the tower so she could shoot too...

...but when she tried to climb up the water deposit, she slipped (failed her Agility roll) and killed herself. Ouch!

But life goes on, and so does the combat. Master bowman shoots at Blunderbluss Girl...

...but the crate takes he arrow for her

The other Brute tries to get Soviet Girl, but she's out of reach

In the meantime, the Dynamo got to the crane. Passed the Agility test so he climbed up to the cabin. He passed his Tech test so he activated it. Then...

...he grabbed the crate...

...and smashed it on the Brute!

Ooooouuuuch!

OK, you can guess this particular action is not specifically covered in the rulebook. But hey, when you come to my home, you know the hazards, this stuff can happen! :D
My mate said he was going to try that and I could only applaud his initiative, these are the things that make the difference between ordinary games and those others that stick to your memory :)
This is the second time I get to put this crane on a board (you may remember the previous one) and I think never before a piece of scenery had been so relevant for gaming purposes. Best. purchase. ever.

Let's keep on. Soviet Girl took the initiative and assaulted the Brute:

You said you like girls takin' the initiative!

But she had nothing to do, even with the assault bonus. The Brute is a skilled close combat fighter.

So she ended up chopped on the ground

End of Turn 3

Junkers had two remaining characters (the Dynamo and the Gear, Blunderbluss Girl) and Gangers had the Bowman, the Brute and the Scumbag. Anything could still happen...

The two girls fought each other. The Bowman didn't want to take the risk of shooting to the melee (though the rules allow you to do so) and got down the tower. The Brute run towards the crane, taking the risk of endng up smashed as his colleague. But Fortune smile the brave, the Dynamo failed his Tech test and didn't manage to ram the crate on his enemy.

That's all what's happening in this pic

Right, you just read that the rules allow you to shoot a melee. The risk is that you may hit a mini of your own, of course. You may be wondering why we didn't do it anyway. Oh, OK, you know me so well...

The Bowman did it

Unbelievably, my dice rolls were not as usual, and the arrow killed the Junker Girl. Apparently I had Legolas in my team and I didn't know! :O

The Dynamo had no other choice than facing the Brute. He assaulted him so he could benefit of the bonuses.

And he fried his ass up with his crack'n'snap weapon

Both Bowman and Scumbag went for the Dynamo

The Bowman jumps up the crate and miserably falls down trying to leap on the other. The Scumbag is on her own

So she is also fried by the electromaniac

The Bowman backs down and tries to put some distance between him and the Dynamo

Just by the skin of his teeth! He shoots an arrow... and misses!! Seriously, man?

So this was the combat that would decide it all. Both characters rolled their dice and... he Bowman won! Oooh! But he only had a small blade. Would that be enough against the Dynamo's suit? New dice roll and...

...it was!

So this was the tense end of the battle, fierce and giving no quarter, all decided in the last stab. Victory for the Gangers!

I think you have seen more or lees the core mechanichs of the game. I really enjoy the alternate activation and the fact that it comes independently of the band, but on each character's Agility skill. I don't know if that's common in recent wargames, I had only seen that before in Skirmish Sangin, and I think it's a win, makes the game much more fluid and forces you to constantly balance your opponent's actions.
Both shooting and close combat are easy. It really strikes me seeing small or old-tech weapons being so lethal, but it makes all the sense. As said before, this is not a hi-tech ambientation with lasers and tanks, this just represents a world in which everything has just gone down the drain and you fight with anything you have, which mostly means a knife and, luckily, a gun, wearing a leather jacket. All this is greatly represented, and I think it's interesting in game terms.
Adding some silliness of our own made it all funnier (oh, the crane!). My pal confessed that he had the intention of using his Dynamo to electrify the shipping crate so my Gangers on it would get a shock (a shame it didn't happen!). The game is really open to that kind of stuff, complete freedom of action so you can do whatever you fancy.
The game works well with this number of minis, six per band, but my guess is that, once you've played a couple of games and you are familiar with weapon profiles and so, there will be no problem in managing larger groups.

On the whole, a nice surprise and totally recommended game, though I must confess this has been my first shot on post-apoc. Anyway, they have some pretty cool minis on their ranges so trust me, Punkapocalyptic is worth of a try.

Wednesday, 18 May 2016

Back to my sci-fi civilians obsession, the other day I inadvertenly stumbled on a couple of blisters that totally caught my attention. Pure eye candy. They belong to the Infinity ranges, which I had never paid too much attention before, to be honest. But I saw these and it was love at first sight.

I've painted one of them, it's this one:

Sweet, wonderful sculpt

One of the main things my civilian mob lacks is women. Finding suitable unarmed female civilians is quite a challenge. There are a number of nice female adventurers (some others way too sexist for what I'm looking for, but that's a totally different topic). Though I had always seen Infinity females into this latter category, I found this one rather adaptable to my board. Besides, it had another virtue, which is the Far Eastern approach. Most gaming companies being settled in Western countries and oriented towards Western public, the miniature hobby tends to be critically ethnic-centred.

Well, I don't know if what I'm saying makes any sense, I'm mixing sexism an ethnicity into minis world. Two topics for a broader debate, I'm afraid. The point is that I fancied a not-European female mini, and this is what I got out of this one:

Keiko Sunshade. Ehm, I'm still working on the name

On a second thought, yes, this could be considered sexist

I dared to display a traditional-like image on the sunshade:

Why didn't I think of Dragon Ball when painting this? Dammit!

Well, this is it for today. This has been my first Infinity mini and I must say I'm delighted, boh design and sculpt are top notch. I don't even know what's this in gaming terms, but for my purposes I think it makes a nice upper class fancy lady. I have another Infinity lady, but I still have to paint her. Hopefully coming soon!

Friday, 13 May 2016

This will be some kind of cheating (does it still count as cheating if I plainly admit it?). I'm in the middle of painting new stuff, but until I get it finished, I have nothing to show, so I'm rescuing these old minis from oblivion.

In fact, to be honest, I'm posting them just because I'm giving them away to a friend who is starting a Nurgle Warband. They've been getting dust for ages, so I'm happy to provide them a new home where they receive the love (and the games!) they deserve.

Not much else to say, I painted them long years ago, so don't expect Golden Demon Award winners (in fact, if you are looking for that, you are definitely in the wrong blog!).

The most interesting piece in the batch may be this Great Unclean One:

Beeeeaargh!

It's the old classic model, but with some touches here and there. I greenstuffed it all over to give it more volume. The original model is, well, ridiculously small! So I had to put some work on the body itself and particularly the arms. The horns come from another model, I cannot remember which one (don't think it's a Citadel one), I felt I had to replace those rotten deer ones the model came with.

Besides, I also had these Plaguebearers:

Clumsy Demons of Rot

A fair mix of old and new models (when I say 'old' and 'new' I'm aware that means 'pretty damn old' and 'nicely old' for many people...). I don't even have developed a concept for the current models GW is selling. Not much to say here, they haven't aged that well, I would repaint all of them save for the weapons maybe. I still haven't got any better rusting stuff :P